EASTER SUNDAY
LECTIONARY READING
First reading: Acts 10:34, 37-43
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 117(118):1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-4 / 1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Gospel: John 20:1-9
Link to readings
COMMENTARY
The scripture readings set out for the Easter Sunday Mass remain unvaried across the three-year cycle – though an alternative, 1 Cor 5:6-8, is given for the second reading. It is somewhat odd that, unless one takes the option of reading at Evening Mass the appearance of the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), neither the Easter Vigil Gospel nor that of Easter Sunday describes an appearance of the risen Lord. We simply hear about the disciples’ discovery that the tomb of Jesus was empty.
The scene from the Fourth Gospel, John 20:1-9, set out for the Gospel, joins the Synoptic tradition in associating Mary Magdalene with this at first very dismaying fact. Later, of course, she will meet the risen Lord.
Now, following her discovery that the tomb is empty, she comes running to Simon Peter and ‘the other disciple’ (the significant figure the Fourth Gospel calls ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, identified in later Christian tradition with John, the son of Zebedee).
Mary’s running and her plaintive cry, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him’, attest the anguish of continuing love and loss. The inference – Johannine irony at its best – is that some human agency (the gardener, the authorities, grave-robbers) have worked this final indignity on the Lord; even in death his body is to have no peace. So we are left with this tremendous sense of emptiness and loss.
ANXIOUS LOVE
At Mary’s report, Peter and the other disciple likewise set out on a ‘race’ of anxious love. By having the other disciple beat Peter in the race and arrive first, the evangelist sets the scene for a significant distinction concerning what is to be seen in the tomb.
Though he arrives first, the disciple does not enter the tomb immediately. Instead he bends down and sees the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped lying on the ground. Peter goes in and, once inside, sees something else as well: not only the linen cloths but also the cloth (corresponding to what we would call a ‘handkerchief’) that covered his face, rolled up neatly in a place by itself. What, if anything, Peter deduces from this arrangments of the grave cloths we do not know. But when the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ eventually enters the tomb and sees the complete scene, the neatly rolled-up face cloth functions for him as a sign. It realises that the absence of Jesus’ body was not due to human agency – robbers do not fold up neatly what they leave behind – but to a majestic, divine resumption of life.
The One who had called himself ‘the Resurrection and the Life’ (11:25) has fulfilled his claim to have the power to lay down his life and likewise to take it up again (10:18).
As the evangelist comments, the beloved disciple ‘saw and believed’. He did not see the risen Jesus – as later Mary Magdalene, Peter, the other apostles and eventually Thomas, would see him – but he saw enough to make him recall the scriptural prophecy that the Messiah would rise from the dead. In this way, before all the others, he came to faith in the resurrection.
A STAND IN FOR ALL OF US
The unnamed ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ stands in there for all of us – believers of subsequent generations. Unlike Mary Magdalene, Peter and the insistent Thomas, we do not actually see (or feel or touch) the risen Lord. And yet, like that beloved disciple, we believe. We can see emptiness and absence not as failure and loss but as mysterious evidence of the divine power to bring life out of death, to call back into being ‘things that are not’ (Rom 4:17 [faith of Abraham]).
In this respect, perhaps, there is something appropriate in the Gospel readings for the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday not recording an appearance of the risen Lord. They draw from us a faith that in the Gospel for next Sunday Jesus will pronounce more ‘blessed’ in his words to Thomas: ‘You (Thomas) believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ (John 20:29).
The First Reading (Acts 10:34, 37-43) gives an account of the sermon Peter preached in the house of the pious Roman centurion Cornelius. It provides a neat summary of the essential Gospel, which the four canonical Gospels expand. The Gospel reaches out to embrace the Gentile world, previously considered ‘unclean’; its inherent power to reconcile overcomes the alienation of that world from God.
In the Second Reading (Col 3:1-4) Paul reminds his audience that even now they share, in a hidden way, in the risen life of their Lord. Keeping constantly in mind the thought of his triumph over sin and death should light their present path with hope and joy.
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
HOMILY NOTES: BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE
It is understandable that the Church should celebrate the octave of Easter by reading each year the episode in the Fourth Gospel where the risen Lord appears to Thomas 'eight days later'. Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday) Year B, 7 April 2024.
LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Acts 4:32-35
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 117(118):2-4, 15-18, 22-24
Second reading: 1 John 5:1-6
Gospel: John 20:19-31
Link to readings
COMMENTARY
It is understandable that the Church should celebrate the octave of Easter by reading each year the episode in the Fourth Gospel where the risen Lord appears to Thomas 'eight days later' (20:19-31). This is preceded, appropriately enough, by a First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles (4:32-35) describing the life of the disciples in the very early days of the Church. A key sign of the Spirit’s presence among the faithful is detachment from material possession. The assertion, 'None of their members was ever in want,' echoes a prescription in Deuteronomy 15:4 in connection with the celebration of the seventh or sabbatical year: a year when all outstanding debts had to be remitted so that the burden of debt would not pile up and continue to be ever more oppressive upon the poor. The gift of freedom and love created by the Spirit enabled the community of believers in Jerusalem to truly live out this liberating command of the Lord.
COMMUNITY OF FRIENDS
The sharing of material goods denoted by 'having all things in common' was destined to last in Christianity only in the monastic tradition. But beyond the material sense, we should be aware of an axiom pervasive in Greco-Roman society that 'friends have all things in common'. What is being indicated, then, is that the early disciples were a community of friends. They shared friendship with the Lord Jesus and because of that they were friends with each other.
The Second Reading from the First Letter of John (5:1-6) features one of those passages in the letter where it is not all that easy to see which way the logic is running. The main point seems to be that loving God, the Father who has 'begotten' us in Christ entails loving our fellow believers. As also begotten by God, they are our “siblings” within the one family of God.
Gospel (John 20:19-31): Thomas is one of the most clearly defined characters in the Fourth Gospel. Born loser, realist, pessimist, he has missed out on the Easter night appearance of Jesus. He won’t believe in the resurrection simply on the other disciples’ claim ‘we have seen the Lord’. He lays down his explicit, highly ‘physical’ conditions.
MY LORD AND MY GOD
With the divine 'courtesy' that is characteristic of the risen Lord in all the appearance stories of the gospels, Jesus is prepared, eight days later, to meet Thomas’ conditions exactly. Before the risen Lord in person, however, Thomas abandons them and makes the most exalted act of faith contained in the Gospel: 'My Lord and my God!'. The confession takes us back to the Prologue: '... the Word was with God and the Word was God' (1:1); 'No one has ever seen God; it is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known' (1:18). At this climactic moment of the Gospel it is Thomas, the late-comer, the obtuse one, the doubter, who proclaims the full identity of Jesus.
But that is not the end. Jesus adds a comment that brings us into the picture too. Thomas has believed because, like Mary Magdalene (20:16) and the other disciples present in the room, he has seen the risen Jesus. Others – succeeding generations of believers – will not see Jesus. Unlike Thomas, they have to believe simply on the report handed down in the Church’s preaching: 'We have seen the Lord'. On them – on us, that is – Jesus pronounces a blessing: 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe'. Why 'blessed'? Because from them/from us a faith greater than that of Thomas and the others will be required: the greater the faith the more scope for the power of God.
SOLEMN ASSURANCE
So the first 'edition' of John’s Gospel (chapters 1-20) ends with this solemn assurance that believers of all subsequent generations are in no way at a disadvantage compared to the original disciples who saw and heard and touched the Lord. The written Gospel imparts to us all the knowledge necessary for a life-giving encounter with the risen Lord.
In several respects one may regret the recent taking over of this Second Sunday of Easter with its sublime Gospel by the designation of it as 'Divine Mercy Sunday'. On the other hand, there is a link between the two in that it is the appearance to Thomas that most particularly brings out that the risen Lord still bears on his body the wounds of his vulnerable love. We might recall what we heard on Good Friday from the the Letter to the Hebrews:
it is not as if we had a high priest incapable of feeling our weakness with us.
… Let us be confident, then, in approaching the throne of grace,
that we shall have mercy from him and find grace when we are in need of help (4:15-16).
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for almost forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels can be found at Pauline Books and Media